The Detroit public school district
announced last week that they would no longer grant waivers to students
allowing them to attend certain public schools outside of Detroit. Ken Coleman,
spokesman for Detroit Public Schools, says the decision was made to "encourage
parents" to stay in the district.

What Detroit school "officials believe" about schools is
irrelevant — competitiveness is not a state of mind. If the city's schools were
competitive, they wouldn't be losing tens of thousands of students, and they
wouldn't need to adopt policies that force parents to return. Such coercive
"competitiveness" would be like Kmart running a mandatory blue-light special:
Our deal on this item is so much better than our competitor's that shoppers aren't
allowed to leave the store until they buy it.

Under
Michigan's public school choice program, parents may send their child to school
in a neighboring district without a waiver, but only if the neighboring district
chooses to participate in the program. Some districts don't participate because
they receive higher per-pupil monies from state government than other districts do.
Participating in the program would mean that such districts would have to accept smaller state government grants for students who came from districts with lower grant levels.

A waiver becomes necessary when parents wish to send
their children to a school in a district that doesn't participate in the public school choice program. Because some suburban districts receive a higher foundation grant than
the Detroit school district, these suburban districts often accept waiver
students if the parent agrees to pay the difference.

One such waiver student is Jasmine Jackson, a Detroit
seventh grader, who attends an East Hills Middle School. Her mother Jacqueline
pays about $2,800 per year to the Bloomfield Hills School District because it receives a
higher per-pupil state grant than Detroit.

Why go to all that extra expense and trouble to arrange car
pool rides for Jasmine to attend school in Bloomfield Hills?

Although Jacqueline refers to herself as a product of
Detroit Public Schools, she says that she is dissatisfied with the education she
received, and that she wants better for her daughter. "What the Detroit Board should
understand," says Jacqueline, "is that we pay additional money which means we
are very passionate about where our child is attending. It means we've actively
gone out and looked at schools and made choices."

As to the Board's recent decision not to issue future
waivers, Jacqueline says it doesn't matter: "Bottom line, they (DPS) will not
get her even if we have to move out of Detroit."

But as the
Detroit Free Press points out, the amount of revenue generated by such a
decision will likely be minimal because most nonresident students attend
schools that don't require a waiver.

That the financial impact will be so minimal should be reason
enough for parents to demand that Detroit Public Schools reverse this decision
immediately. But it is not primarily a financial question. Rather, it is that
government schools have no moral right to compel parents — the people who pay
teacher salaries — to utilize the schools’ services. It might also be a good
time for the Legislature to amend
Michigan's schools-of-choice laws so that districts like Detroit no
longer have the power to withhold a waiver from a family that wants one.

While quick action to fix this problem is needed on the
part of Detroit Public Schools and the Legislature, some families won't be
waiting around. Lifelong Detroit resident Charles Williams, whose 6th
grade daughter goes to school outside the district on a waiver, says, "There will be a 'for sale' sign going up on my property in two days."
Like many other Detroiters, he's moving to the suburbs for better schools.

Restrictive government policies that prevent parents from
sending their children to schools they choose may only exist in the form of
paper and ink, but they serve the same purpose as concertina wire and guards.
They make people servants of government rather than government a servant of the
people.

With government schools "encouraging" parents like that,
who needs coercion?

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Brian L. Carpenter is director of leadership development
for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a research and educational institute
headquartered in Midland, Mich. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is
hereby granted, provided that the author and the Center are properly cited.